in the beginning

OK here we go..............
This is my first attempt to write about food, cooking and the restaurant industry. I am
coming up on the 2009 tourist season and I thought it would be interesting if not at least entertaining, to share some of my challenges, ideas, thoughts and some if the wild things that can happen during a busy Alaskan tourist season.

I am going to start off posting a response I wrote on the restaurant report web site here:

http://www.restaurantreport.com/Greatdebates/independents_p3.html

which I think sums up on how I feel about the restaurant industry.....

"I am an Executive Chef at a hotel in Alaska. Although I work for an Alaskan corporation with multiple sites, I have complete control over my menu, staff and restaurant. So in that regard it is like running an independent restaurant with corporate backing. I have worked in every aspect and in every job in the restaurant from chain to independent. My point of view comes from 20 years of experience.

I find most of these folks who are defending their chain restaurants have one sided views of the industry and have not worked outside the "chained" area of the business. I bet most of you went to a college and learned about restaurant management from corporate sponsored programs (which I bet at the time you did not know that it was funded by them). Or you took that 6 week crash course in culinary school so you can learn those culinary "terms" and "sayings" to move on up the ladder. Or you just worked your way up the chain right out of high school going from Applebees to Red Lobster to TGIF.

Anyone who has worked for a small café or a Mom and Pop place or even big locally owned restaurant has experienced the soul that possesses the atmosphere, people and most important, the food. What you lack in your "dining" establishments is the most important thing of all, soul. It is the thing you mimic by decorating your walls with old signs and funky hip things, Foo Foo drinks and waiters with trucker hats and flare on there suspenders.

Sure you may make your own sauces from scratch, big deal, someone in a test kitchen in a lab wrote the recipe, its bullet proof, idiot proof and monkey proof. At that point its no different than a Big Mac in Jersey. There is no soul in it.

You may work hard at your jobs and may care a great deal about what you do. That’s great! No one denies that, but do you honestly think that you set the standards that others follow? What independent restaurant is jumping on the Fried Mac and Cheese Appetizer? We are the ones who set the standards that you follow. We put the soul and heart into our food and service. It is you who take it and bastardize it by putting three different "fun dippers" or adding your "south of the border" sauce to it. Telling us what is cool and in the now.

Do you honestly believe that the chain restaurants are a valuable, viable part of our industry? Come on. They are an eye sore on the roadways and they poison the palate with bland and over sauced food.

They may keep the employment rate up, but they do nothing to teach young cooks to become talented Chefs or educate Joe Public about food. I will hire someone first with no experience before someone with fast food or chain restaurant experience. You teach them absolutely nothing!

All of you who defend the products you serve in chain restaurants, and how you train your staff, should be ashamed and embarrassed for what you contribute to the restaurant industry. We need to be making the industry a better place by educating and training professionals. Not making it a place where an out of work actor can get a job until his big break or the social studies teacher can make some extra money because he thinks that its an easy job. I have never once thought that I could get a job teaching school to supplement my income or drive a train on the weekends to make extra cash.

I am so tired of this being the industry where anyone can come and get a job and suck at it and that's OK.

You do nothing good for this industry.

During the great rise of chain restaurants in the early 90's, a great Chef once told me that there is no more art left in culinary arts.

I have found that not to be true. With all great art that becomes commercialized, watered down and processed for the masses, there have always been the true artisans, at the end of the road, in the back alley, anywhere off the beaten path, keeping the heart and soul alive and truly making my world a better place."

Erik Slater
Executive Chef
Seward, Alaska